Leading as One: Building High-Trust, High-Performance Teams

Explore how trust, communication, and alignment influence team performance. Learn practical leadership techniques to break down silos and improve cross-functional collaboration.

Scam-Proof Your Business: Real Cases, Actionable Strategies, and What BBB's Data Tells Us

Drawing from BBB Scam Tracker data, this session examines real-world fraud impacting businesses today and delivers actionable guidance on identifying trends, strengthening defenses, and protecting customer trust.

Leading Change: It's Rarely About the Tech

Technology transformations most often fail due to people misalignment, not system failures. Focuses on building trust, improving communication, and aligning teams to successfully navigate organizational change.

Navigating the 2026 Threat Landscape: National CISA Directives and Local Defense Strategies

Get an up-to-date look at the evolving cyber threat landscape impacting both national security and local organizations. This session breaks down key federal cybersecurity directives alongside real-world risks facing businesses today. Attendees will gain practical insight into recognizing emerging threats and applying actionable strategies to strengthen organizational defenses.

The Great Equalizer: Access, Dignity, and the People Technology Forgot

Information has always been distributed unequally, and the people Black Hills Works supports have spent their lives on the wrong side of that distribution. Reading a letter. Understanding a medical instruction. Asking a question and getting a real answer. Each has depended on another person's time and availability. AI changes that, restoring dignity and independence to a population denied both for too long.

Black Hills Works serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in western South Dakota. This session covers what the organization did: wrote AI policy first, trained every staff member, and moved while most of the sector waited. That work drew attention beyond South Dakota, including speaking invitations at the state and national level.

It also drew Anthropic. Through a program called Lighthouse, Anthropic engineers and product specialists are building tools and solutions alongside BHW meant to work as real equalizers for the adults we support.

In this session we will cover the journey BHW has endured so far, the story behind being selected to be a Lighthouse for Non-Profit Healthcare providers globally, and a new initiative called Claude Corps which we are so excited to participate in!

Take a breather, exchange ideas, and build connections with peers across industries.

Enjoy a catered lunch and continue conversations from the morning sessions provided by the presenting sponsors.

This panel highlights how past TECHLeadership attendees have applied what they learned. Panelists will share real examples of what’s worked, what they’ve adjusted, and the results they’ve seen to offer practical ideas attendees can take back and use within their own organizations.

Test your cybersecurity knowledge in this fast-paced, interactive trivia round. Compete with peers on threats, best practices, and security concepts. Prizes for top scores and traveling trophy for the champion!

The format is flipped — questions go to attendees, not panelists. A candid, participant-driven experience that sparks genuine dialogue.

Why Smart Businesses Buy the Wrong Technology

Every year, organizations invest heavily in new technology expecting it to solve their biggest challenges. Yet many of these projects fail to deliver the expected results. Why? Because technology is often treated as the solution before the real business problem is fully understood. In this session, you'll learn a simple, business-first framework for making smarter technology decisions, aligning investments with organizational goals, and ensuring your next technology purchase delivers measurable business value.

The Story Your Data Is Trying to Tell
How Better Questions Lead to Better Decisions

Organizations collect more data than ever before, yet many leaders still struggle to turn information into action. The most successful organizations are not necessarily those with the most data, but those that understand how to turn data into insight and insight into decisions. This session explores how to identify the story your data is telling, ask the questions that matter most, and create business value from the information already available to you. We'll examine how data, analytics, and AI work together to support better decision-making and help leaders move from simply measuring performance to shaping outcomes.

Why don't we ever talk?

Why do teams so often suffer from silence, leaving managers and employees asking, "Why don't we ever talk?" This session explores how leaders must actively unlock communication paths by opening doors that associates feel empowered to walk through. Once these doors are open, associates must actively utilize them to create the bi-directional trust necessary for a high-functioning workplace. Without this mutual trust, communication stalls, acting as a massive efficiency killer for the entire organization. We'll bring real-life examples and hypothetical scenarios to demonstrate how open communication can transform daily communication habits.

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The Human Edge: Leading in the Age of AI

AI is transforming how organizations operate — but the true competitive advantage remains human leadership. Explore how to combine AI capabilities with creativity, strategy, and relationships to drive meaningful outcomes.

Reflections on the day's themes and a look ahead. Thank you for being part of TECHLeadership 2026.

Close out the conference with refreshments, great conversations, and exciting prize giveaways. Must be present to win.